


Patterns

by superfluouskeys



Series: 7 Days of Fic for 777 Followers [5]
Category: Cinderella (1950), Cinderella - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, JUST, nothing technically wrong with this but ya know, read at your own risk hahaha, there's like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-31
Updated: 2017-03-31
Packaged: 2018-10-13 05:05:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10506858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superfluouskeys/pseuds/superfluouskeys
Summary: Cinderella traces the same patterns over and over, searching for a release from a tension she cannot name.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A prompt response for "Cinderella/Tremaine: crave"
> 
> Kind of a follow up to another piece I wrote forever ago here if that sort of thing interests you. Eventually I'll get all my stuff in one place but today is not that day:  
> https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9383434/1/Homesickness
> 
> Anyway, I'm trash, enjoy hahaha.

"Ella?"

Cinderella didn't respond.  She was preoccupied.  She traced the embroidery on her dress with her fingertip, angle, swirl, swirl, angle, back and forth, and pressed so hard the pad of her finger started to feel a bit numb.

"Ella."

He was so good to her.  She afforded him the weak echo of a smile.  His eyes were so troubled now, but how could she explain?  How could she continue to look into them now, yet how could she face the alternative once more?

He inclined his head.  "Are you well, darling?"

Cinderella cupped his face with her gloved hand, but could offer no better response.

"Why, Princess Ella," said another voice, in many ways the exact antithesis of his, and icy terror mixed with something horrible and indefinable shot through Cinderella's body, from head to fingertips to toes.  "What a pleasure to see you again.  It has been too long."

Every word laced with hidden meanings, heavy with sarcasm, darkened by a threat, but to what end, Ella would not be able to say if pressed.  The real threat lay within her own treacherous heart.  Cinderella focused her gaze upon Lady Tremaine's shoes.  "Hello, Stepmother."

But no one seemed to notice the tension in the air, the nameless thing that hung between them, not even her prince, who was so concerned for her, and the gathering continued as it had been planned, as she'd always known it had been planned.

If she had been able to pay attention, Cinderella imagined she'd have had a rather pleasant afternoon.  This was primarily a gathering of her prince's family, and noble families, she had learned, were a veritable gallimaufry of bizarre and consistently scandalous individuals.  Her prince had spent his entire lifetime learning everything he could about them so as to ease all social interactions between them, and he worked the room masterfully.

Not so long ago, he would have whispered funny secrets to her along his path.

She longed for that easy intimacy, with a kind of aching hollowness, as she watched him catch a glimpse of her, hesitate, and then nod politely before he moved onward.  There was a rift forming between them--a rift she was causing, and one she had no idea how to mend.

What was it she so craved, she wondered?  What was it that hounded her sleep, hung heavy over her days, coloured her every interaction? 

Moreover, why could she find no voice to put her distress into words?  Her prince offered her his hand and his smile and his loving eyes, that did not understand but certainly wanted to.  Why could she not bring herself to reach out and take them?

She discovered her answer in white-hot flashes of something akin to panic.  Once, when she was caught so off her guard by Lady Tremaine's presence that she bumped into a noblewoman who felt inclined to give her an earful on the matter.  Later, when Lady Tremaine quite simply walked closely behind her, barely enough for the hem of her skirt to brush against the hem of Cinderella's.  Just enough for the gentle click of her cane to send a tremor from Cinderella's shoes right up to...

Cinderella had to hide herself away for awhile after that.  She felt so sure her shame was written all over her face that she could not bear to look another person in the eyes until she'd gotten a hold of herself.  Presuming there was anything left to hold onto.

The festivities dragged on into the night, until copious drinking got the better of most of the guests and the castle fell into an eerie silence exacerbated by the worsening weather.  It was bitter cold in the hallway that led to Cinderella's rooms, and beginning to snow outside by the time she'd put on her night dress. 

Her prince would not come to her tonight, she knew.  She'd seen it in the resignation on his face, the way he barely chanced more than a look in her direction towards the end of the evening.  She'd noticed it even though her attention had been rapt and her shame overwhelming.

She stood on the inside of her own door for what seemed like hours.  She traced the wood paneling on the door with her fingertip, swirl, angle, angle, swirl, until the pad of her finger went numb, and perhaps until some part of her conscious mind went along with it.

Snow fell in sheets against the windowpanes now, blurred out the world gradually behind a mist of white, as though erasing it from existence.  Cinderella's head was bowed low as she walked, put one foot in front of the other as though in a dance, or a funeral march.  Her body was alight with the cold, with the fear, with the craving.

The door to Lady Tremaine's suite was just slightly ajar.  The lady in question sat just in her sightline, teacup held aloft, like something one might see in a painting.  It was as though Lady Tremaine had been waiting for her, as though she'd known Cinderella would come.

She felt Lady Tremaine's gaze upon her before she dared lift her head.  Heard the gentle clacking of the teacup upon the end table and the rustle of her skirts as she stood, then silence.  Lady Tremaine stood and waited, triumphant, as Cinderella walked slowly, deliberately, sure-footedly towards her.

"What a surprise," Lady Tremaine murmured, saccharine, gloating.

The words washed over her like cold water, brutal, jarring, refreshing.  Cinderella lifted her eyes at last.

Lady Tremaine placed two fingers beneath CInderella's chin, willing her to look up a bit further.  "Tell me, child," she breathed, and there was some new energy in her voice that Cinderella had never heard before, "why have you come to me?"

Nothing but a shuddering sigh escaped Cinderella's lips.

Lady Tremaine leaned in closer, so that when she repeated herself, slowly and emphatically, the words vibrated low and warm just a breath away from Cinderella's lips.  "Why," she echoed, "have you come here?"

"Because--" Cinderella managed, breathlessly, little more than a whimper.  Her mind latched onto something Lady Tremaine had said what seemed ages ago, part of another lifetime.  "Because you know...what I...deserve..."

She was impossibly closer now, still not quite touching Cinderella but for the fingertips upon her chin.  "And what is that?"

Cinderella averted her eyes, felt her face--her entire being--flush with shame.  "To be...punished," she whispered, and it might as well have been blurred out with the snowstorm around them.

But Lady Tremaine would have none of it.  "Don't--!" she snarled.  Now her hand was upon Cinderella's throat, flush, but not applying any pressure, a clear and insidious threat.  "Do not," she said, low and harsh, "look away from me."

"To be punished!" Cinderella cried.  This brief outburst was more than enough to frighten her into obedience.  She forced herself to look up, wide-eyed, directly into those unnervingly bright green eyes, swallowed hard and held her head high.

Lady Tremaine was silent for a time, then, and still, too, though that was hardly unusual.  Her eyes had taken on that strange quality they often did when she was deep in thought.  Like they were so green they were glowing, somehow.  Otherworldly.  Terrifying.

Her grip on Cinderella's throat had tightened, Cinderella noticed suddenly, but it had been so gradual she hadn't noticed.  And now both her hands were at Cinderella's throat, fingers splayed along the line of her jaw, unmoving, considering.

Lady Tremaine's fingertips traveled downward, traced the curvature of Cinderella's collarbone--as though it were embroidery on a dress or paneling on a door, something standing between her and what she craved.  Her lips hovered close again, but now it was to Cinderella's ear, and when at last they made contact, it was with the skin just below her ear--the sting of teeth against the tender flesh there, and Cinderella's knees nearly gave way beneath her right then and there.

Flashes of old memories returned to her, the rap of Lady Tremaine's cane across her hands when she'd failed at some arbitrary task, and then, later, across her backside.  How she'd wept at first, how she'd shied away and done her best to be good, only to find herself invisible.

How soon she'd perversely come to crave the attention in whatever form it came.

Lady Tremaine's fingertips were ice cold, snowdrops blown in from the storm, and as they tugged at the drawstring of Cinderella's nightdress, she murmured, "What would your poor prince think of you, I wonder?  He, who has so deluded himself into seeing a proper lady?"

Cinderella bowed her head in shame once more.  This was the crux of it, why the loving looks and gentle touches invoked nothing but sorrow in her heart, nothing but distant longing for the sensation of longing.

Nothing but an empty wish that the spoils of kindness could ever have been enough, or rather, that she could ever have been enough for them.

Lady Tremaine's touch was gentle just now, but her words were cutting.  Her eyes were cold and uncaring, but her gaze was piercing enough to see what everyone else seemed content to ignore.  And when Cinderella's night dress had fallen away, and Lady Tremaine's teeth were at her throat, and Lady Tremaine's fingernails had dug into her flesh, Cinderella felt the most treacherous thing of all: a tremendous release. 

The true punishment, that thing she so desperately, depravedly longed for, was not any one word or action, but the one Cinderella inflicted upon herself--had done before, had dreamed of endlessly, and would seek out again, again, again, tracing and retracing the same pattern until it carved itself into her skin.

For she found that what she craved most of all was to be seen, and seen truly.  A dreadful thing to wish on a person; yet after all, Lady Tremaine was the dreadful woman who had made her this way.


End file.
